An elite unit of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington and federal prosecutors in New York and Miami are building cases using evidence provided by former cocaine traffickers, informants who were once close to top Venezuelan officials and defectors from the Venezuelan military, these people say.

A leading target, according to a Justice Department official and other American authorities, is National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, considered the country’s second most-powerful man.

The piece stresses that the flow of defectors and new informants helping to fatten up the file has grown from a trickle to a stream recently. And it makes sense: the guys running the Diosdado operation have to live in the same shitty country as everyone else. They have to hustle to find toilet paper like everyone else. They lay awake worrying at night when their teenage kids go out partying, wondering if they’ll come home safe, just like everyone else. But they can’t just leave like everyone else. They’re knee deep in illegal shit. If they want to get out, they have to cooperate with investigators.

Guess what? They’re cooperating.

Listen, I know: a sealed indictment against Diosdado Cabello is about as much use as an ashtray on a motorcycle. Still, it’s nice to know someone is taking the task of documenting this stuff seriously. If for no one else, then for the historians’ sake.

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